to rust
by dance-at-bougival
Summary: she is war. she prepares for battle.


**a/n:** a 'missing scene' from the movie. set after sif's failed audience with the newly crowned loki and before her decision to go to midgard.

* * *

The corners of the room were swathed in inky black, shadows long and trailing on the floor like tar, like grasping hands. Sif presses her fingers, still, flat, against the hide on his bed, each fur on the bear hide static against her oversensitive skin.

She is War, and she is prepared for battle.

She senses his presence more than hears it; feels it on the back of her bare neck, brushing, susurrus against her skin, where her hairline begins. Around her, the shadows in the corners of the room extend, as if reaching for her. For a moment, it seems as if the very walls are falling down, weighed heavy by their very shades.

"You should not be here." He says.

She does not turn around. She does not wish to see, any more than she has to, the pair of horns upon his head, the green cloak trailing behind him, the display of gold at his throat. She does not wish to see his trappings of office, or how his brows furrow beneath the sharp v of his helm; she does not wish to see that uneasy glint of desperation in his eyes, in the lines around his mouth. She does not wish to see him morph and change into something unrecognizable.

"I am with my King," she says instead, and her voice is not steady. She has never been gifted with words the way he is; she does not have flatteries and clever turns of phrases tucked between her fingers like knives. "As a warrior of Asgard, is that not my sworn place?"

"As a warrior of Asgard, your place is where your King says it is." He replies, and his voice is hard, but the edges are slipping, falling; something urgent and desperate and brutal in the rises and falls of his cadences. He has never been guttural, like his _golden_ brother. But now his Silvertongue has jagged ends. "And I say, audiences for the day has ceased; your presence is an intrusion, Lady Sif."

Her fingers grasp, tighten into the fur on his bed. She does not turn around. Her voice, when she speaks, is low. "We are friends, are we not, Loki?"

(Fingers in her hair; at the juncture between her jaw and throat; tightening, twisting. No. She would not say they were friends.)

"We were—" he stills, and she turns to see him remove his helm with hands that shake. It hits the table with a dull thud, and she realizes, for the first time, the sheer weight of the thing. He turns, and his face is impassive once more. "We are."

"And you and Thor," she presses forwards, onwards. Her eyes flicker, searching for a single hint of imbalance, for a single chink in the armour. She is war, and this is a battle like any other. All she has to do is find the weakness and _strike_. "You are brothers, are you not?"

For a moment something strange, something dark passes over his face, and the room grows darker, as if the shadows have reached forward to take him into their embrace, as if he is melting away entirely. She is hit by a sudden urge to reach forward; to first a hand in the beaten leather of his robes and pull him _back_.

"I cannot grant your request." His eyes shutter closed then, the green cool and blank. He wears the guises of a king well, she knows, knows exactly which expressions to deploy and which words to murmur; the state rests upon him, but he does not wear it like a second skin. If he shifts, the body royal does not shift with him. All the regality and all the rank in the world cannot make up for a shadow; none of it can make up for a shuttered heart.

"Cannot?" She asks. "Or will not?"

His eyes cast downwards, but it is not surrender.

(She had made him beg once. The thought grates now; sits heavy upon her.)

His lashes sweep dark lines against the rise of his cheekbones, black and inky as his shadows against the stretch of pale skin, and the thin mouth that she knows so well twists, curls in on itself as he moves forwards, keeping a deliberate distance between them. He paces in a circle, his hands still at his sides.

"I am compelled as King of Asgard," he says lowly, and the edge is returned, the edge is there, the edge cuts and curls ever so slightly and Sif wonders at his mind, wonders at the twisting mechanics of it, wonders if this is finally it, if all those nights when she has waited for him to crack, all those days before the coronation where he had retreated into himself, wonders at all those years of being a shadow—

She wonders, then, and it hits her like a vast wind. She wonders if this is it.

"I must honour the Allfather's last wish," he carries on, and the smoothness of his voice is corroding. Less like silver now; more like rust. "I must guard the interests of the people; I must protect us against the Jotunns; I must uphold my sworn oath, as you must, Lady. I must be the King Asgard needs at this juncture in time." He comes to a stop behind her, and she feels his blood, like battle, like rage, boiling to the top of his surface; against his skin. "All of these obligations I carry individually forbid me to recall Thor. Together, they condemn it."

He is at his most dangerous with words honed to a point; he is at his safest when he is silent. There is too much heart in his lies, she knows, and as War she knows this even better—where a hand holds a sword, it cannot hold a shield.

"So you would condemn your own brother to a mortal exile." She replies quietly. "You would let him rot."

"I would let him _rise_!" Loki shouts. "I would forge him anew, as the Allfather intended—"

"You would leave him in banishment—" her own voice is beginning to rise; she feels battle coiling within her like a snake. "You would let him languish away on Earth, you would let him live out the rest of his life in exile from his family just so you could play out your fantasies of kingship—"

He stills. He does not move. His fingers grip and hold, tight against his side.

Finally—

"You presume, Lady Sif." He says, quiet.

"To know you?" She whispers. "Yes. I do. I did."

"To know anything." He says, with a smile. "You presume to know Thor. You presume to know yourself. You presume to know Asgard. You presume to see the faults that are not there and triumphs where there are none. You presume to know the second son just as you do the first, you presume—"

"I know the first." She snaps. "But it seems that I never did know the second."

"You presume to know—" he laughs out loud, a broken maniacal thing, and the hair on the back of her neck rises. "You think I want this? You think I want to sit in council? You think I wish to sit in father's seat, listen to his councillors, listen to the nobility who would rather scorn me than pay me courtesy, who look upon me and judge me for the sole fact that I am not Thor, who call me the silver king, the fickle king, the Trickster and the fraud and would rather spit on me than pay me common dues—" his voice cuts off on a sharp intake of air. "You mistake me, Lady Sif. You mistake me, and the answer is _no_."

She does not move.

He collapses on to the bed, suddenly exhausted, and his voice is thick. His hand presses against his forehead, hard and unflinching, as if he is miming the press of his helm, as if he is trying to press the state of kings into his very bones.

"Go." He says thickly. "Go, and do not come back. I bid you as your King."

She turns briskly, and does not stop until she is at his door. She looks back at him over her shoulder, the fractured pieces of a plan forming quickly in her mind—

She is War.

He sits, shoulders slumped, those long fingers pressed white against his head, his hair dishevelled. She strains herself, and does not hear him breathe.

"I would die for your brother." She says softly. His shoulders tighten. "But we are friends. I am doing this for you too."

She leaves, footsteps staccato against the bronze floors. Down the hallway, she exhales, and sends a prayer the Allfather's way.

_Your wayward son needs you,_ she thinks. _Save him._ _Please_.


End file.
